A little fluffy cloud in the sky weighs as much as 100 elephants. Just thought you should know. (via GeekPress)…
A little fluffy cloud in the sky weighs as much as 100 elephants.
Just thought you should know.
(via GeekPress)
Here’s a long and rather snarky article about Disneyland regulars — folks who go there multiple times a week, who memorize trivia about the park, who argue about inconsequential matters,…
Here’s a long and rather snarky article about Disneyland regulars — folks who go there multiple times a week, who memorize trivia about the park, who argue about inconsequential matters, who collect gazillions of pins, who …
… well, who sound like any other sort of fanboy obsessives, no different from SF fans, gamers, book collectors, stamp collectors, or baseball fanatics. Or, as the writer points out (one of the few insights he has), Talmudic scholars.
(via BoingBoing)
Sure as shootin’, this is going to show up in one of our safety bulletins at the office — though I’m not sure what the safety lesson is supposed to…
Sure as shootin’, this is going to show up in one of our safety bulletins at the office — though I’m not sure what the safety lesson is supposed to be, besides the obvious “Don’t let this happen to you.”
A construction worker, using a 1.5″ auger drill, felt his ladder start to wobble. He threw the drill aside, as trained, but still ended up falling on it, driving the 15″ bit through his eye … and through his skull.
“I ran my hands up the drill bit, up to my eye, and put my other hand in the back of my head and felt it coming through the back of my head,” he said. “And that’s where pretty much the shock set in.”
Yeah, that would pretty much be it for me, too.
Fortunately, the bit pushed the brain aside, rather than punching through it. Doctors basically unscrewed the thing. Though the guy lost his eye, he seems to be fairly uninjured otherwise.
(via BoingBoing)
Alas, Ikea doesn’t exist here in Colorado. I’ve always enjoyed the store, the interesting furniture, the cheap knick-knacks, the … interesting names. It’s mildly reassuring that all those product names…
Alas, Ikea doesn’t exist here in Colorado. I’ve always enjoyed the store, the interesting furniture, the cheap knick-knacks, the … interesting names.
It’s mildly reassuring that all those product names actually follow a system. For example, dining tables and chairs are named after Finnish placenames, while bathroom articles are named after Scandinavian bodies of water.
But, of course, it being the Swedes, would you expect any less than a cryptic but rigorous sense of organization?
(via BoingBoing)
It’s advice we give every kid (“Now, apologize for what you did. Say you’re sorry.”). But as adults, we avoid it, especially on a large scale, because of fear that…
It’s advice we give every kid (“Now, apologize for what you did. Say you’re sorry.”). But as adults, we avoid it, especially on a large scale, because of fear that an apology will lead to a law suit.
That fear may be ungrounded, based on two new studies.
In the two studies, participants, ages 21 to 70, read a scenario describing a pedestrian-bicycle accident. They were asked to take on the role of the injured person and evaluate a settlement offer from the other party, based on information about the injuries, the other party’s conduct, and each party’s responsibility for causing the accident.
Robbennolt found that when a full apology was given, 73 percent of the respondents would accept the settlement offer. When no apology was given, 52 percent would accept, but when a partial apology was given, only 35 percent would accept.
Even when Robbennolt changed the scenario and made the evidence of fault less clear, a partial apology was still often perceived no differently than no apology. Results also showed that the severity of the injury mattered. The more severe the injury, the more need to fully apologize.
“An offender who offered a full apology was seen as experiencing more regret, as being more moral and more likely to be careful in the future than one offering a partial or no apology,” Robbennolt said.
Interesting, and sensible. Note, of course, that lawyers didn’t get involved …
(via PRBop)
Kurt Busiek. George Perez. JLA/Avengers #1. Holy Freakin’ Smoke….
Kurt Busiek.
George Perez.
JLA/Avengers #1.
Holy Freakin’ Smoke.
An internal audit found that IRS tax advisers — you know, the ones you’re encouraged to call in case you have a question on your 1040, etc.? — answered questions…
An internal audit found that IRS tax advisers — you know, the ones you’re encouraged to call in case you have a question on your 1040, etc.? — answered questions correctly on tax law only 57% of the time. Auditors posed as taxpayers, calling the IRS hotline.
IRS employees provided complete and correct answers to 45 percent of the questions asked by auditors, and correct but incomplete answers in 12 percent of the cases.
IRS employees told the auditors to do their own research in IRS publications to find the answers in response to 12 percent of the questions, despite an IRS policy banning the practice.
Incorrect answers were given to 28 percent of the questions. The questions most commonly answered incorrectly dealt with the earned income tax credit, education credit and dependents.
The IRS responded by arguing that the audit mistakenly counted cases where callers were referred to other publications or couldn’t get any help. Excluding those, the accuracy rate leapt up to a staggering 67% (which, to be fair, the IRS admitted was “inadequate”).
Remember that, next time you get audited.
(via Ipse Dixit)
If it weren’t that I was standing in the middle of a paved patio, I’d’ve sworn I just walked through a security scanner and set it off. Bells are passe…
If it weren’t that I was standing in the middle of a paved patio, I’d’ve sworn I just walked through a security scanner and set it off.
Bells are passe at schools these days, I guess. So are klaxon, or even a simple stone. Instead, at Katherine’s school we get a warbling electronic tone that sounds like … well, like a security scanner.
Dirty commie pinko educational establishment …
Very, very cool site on the Highways of Colorado, including histories, photos, the tangle of systems used, interchange names, and so forth. Suhweet. (via the Rocky)…
Very, very cool site on the Highways of Colorado, including histories, photos, the tangle of systems used, interchange names, and so forth. Suhweet.
(via the Rocky)
Denver Water is lifting watering restrictions as of 1 October. I dunno. I’m philosophically annoyed by the “nanny state,” but I’m also thinking that the more we get used to…
Denver Water is lifting watering restrictions as of 1 October.
I dunno. I’m philosophically annoyed by the “nanny state,” but I’m also thinking that the more we get used to at least some modicum of water restrictions (e.g., three times per week), the better we’ll handle future shortages caused by growth.
Oh, well. We’ll see how it goes.
Here’s an interesting article on how web page opening delays affects the perceived quality, usefulness, and interest of the page. Something to bear in mind when you load things up…
Here’s an interesting article on how web page opening delays affects the perceived quality, usefulness, and interest of the page. Something to bear in mind when you load things up with lots of big graphics …
Which then led me (because of a couple of quotes) to a page with a series of “laws” for service organizations. Something to think about, if you manage (or work in) such an org.
This has been your (ahem) service announcement for today.
Dee-doo, dee-doo, dee-doo … “Daddy, your Paw-piwwut is ringing.” Now, I’m pretty certain that I’ve never explicitly taught her it’s a “Palm Pilot.” I’m pretty sure Margie’s not done so,…
Dee-doo, dee-doo, dee-doo …
“Daddy, your Paw-piwwut is ringing.”
Now, I’m pretty certain that I’ve never explicitly taught her it’s a “Palm Pilot.” I’m pretty sure Margie’s not done so, either.
So clearly she picks up that sort of thing by casual osmosis.
An object lesson, I think.
You know it’s true, and I know it’s true, but I’ve never seen it actually quantified before….
You know it’s true, and I know it’s true, but I’ve never seen it actually quantified before.
An intersting observation by Geoff Cohen on the alleged awfulness of not being able to trust photographic evidence in a digitally manipulative world: This sort of thing sends people into…
An intersting observation by Geoff Cohen on the alleged awfulness of not being able to trust photographic evidence in a digitally manipulative world:
This sort of thing sends people into a tizzy. “We won’t be able to trust film! We won’t have a perfect record!” But the funny thing is that this was true for 99% of the history of the human race; only in the last hundred years or so have we had this idea that technology could serve as a perfect, impartial observer. All that digital editing has done is return us to that state, where instead of relying on the perfection of technology, we need to begin to relearn to sense the motives and honesty of the people holding the evidence; no different than any other kind of testimony or story.
Indeed, even photography — and even leaving out the earlier ability to analogicallly alter same — has never meant a perfect record. Shooting angle and moment can manipulate, mislead, or even deceive, as any good photographer (or political consultant) knows.
Still, interesting.
Someone’s actually developed a “Real Map” of Europe, using the names that the countries call themselves as the country names, rather than the Anglicized version of it. It’s an interesting…
Someone’s actually developed a “Real Map” of Europe, using the names that the countries call themselves as the country names, rather than the Anglicized version of it.
It’s an interesting exercise, though I disagree that the “normal” maps are a “ridiculous … last vestige of colonialism.”
(via BoingBoing)
Last week, Steven Den Beste (temporarily) upgraded his CMS (blogging) software from CityDesk v1 to v2. One of the features the new upgrade touted was the ability to execute a…
Last week, Steven Den Beste (temporarily) upgraded his CMS (blogging) software from CityDesk v1 to v2. One of the features the new upgrade touted was the ability to execute a program (or batch file) upon posting a message, which would, in theory, allow for pinging a blog monitoring site such as weblogs.com.
Since I’d love to know when he posts, I offered to assist.
CityDesk is a client-side CMS, so all the files and everything are handled on the local machine’s database, then posted on command to a web site — a different model than the web-hosted sorts of tools such as MT and Blogger and the like. Obviously SDB likes it, though it has aspect that would drive me nuts — such as a lack of XMLRPC pinging tool. The newest version has aspects that drove SDB nuts, too, so he’s rolled back to v1, rendering my discussion with him moot. But I thought I’d post the results here, anyway.
Now, even without XMLRPC tools built-in, it’s still possible to manually ping a lot of these sites by going to them and filling out their manual ping form. Even though SDB only posts once or twice a day, that extra step was not in his specs for how he wanted this to work, which was (to sum up):
So, going to the weblogs.com manual ping site , or the blo.gs one, or the blogrolling.com one, was right out.
Doing a little digging, I found that some folks had worked up a way to manually fill in and execute those forms. So, for example, you could have a batch file that executed:
“C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe” http://newhome.weblogs.com/pingSiteForm?name=’sitename‘&url=siteurl
(Or you could just put that address and details into an IE link button. And, presumably, you could do something similar for the other manual ping sites.)
Ah, but that leaves “cruft” in its wake — IE windows that need to be closed. Not a huge deal, but not what SDB wanted.
I spent a while digging about. Folks with knowledge of SOAP and HTTP-POST and XML-RPC, and, for all I know, everyone with a Linux installation or something like that, could probably whip something up, but I was seriously scratching my head.
Then, finally, after googling “CityDesk weblogs.com,” I found this site. There I found a VBS script that can send an XMLRPC ping to weblogs.com, with the site parameters on the command line. Sweet. It would just take a batch file to invoke:
cscript uwdc.vbs “sitename” “siteurl”
And, again, presumably it could be modified to ping the other sites that accept such pings.
As I said, it turned out to be moot. But I thought I’d document what I found here, in case someone else is in the same boat.
Of course, for most people, my recommendation would be to change to Movable Type …
What else can you call it when a guy unwittingly steals a GPS-enabled home detention transmitter from a prisoner, one that constantly broadcasts where it is? Bet the guys at…
What else can you call it when a guy unwittingly steals a GPS-enabled home detention transmitter from a prisoner, one that constantly broadcasts where it is?
Bet the guys at the jailhouse have a lot of fun with that one.
Would you want a guy who looks like this hanging around your elementary school? Me neither. This is my “parent ID” for Katherine’s pre-school. The picture wasn’t helped by…
Would you want a guy who looks like this hanging around your elementary school?
Me neither.
This is my “parent ID” for Katherine’s pre-school. The picture wasn’t helped by (a) their holding a cheap digital camera (b) six inches from my nose, (c) under sickly fluorescent lights, then (d) printing it out on a very cheap inkjet printer.
Pretty damned scary, if you ask me.
Of course, it means I don’t have to sign in and leave my Drivers License at the front desk. When I did that this morning, the lady asked me if it was really me.
So … maybe … I do … look like this.
Eep!
It can imitate any roller coaster move, and do some that it can’t, and it can even let you decide on what moves you want it to throw you through….
It can imitate any roller coaster move, and do some that it can’t, and it can even let you decide on what moves you want it to throw you through. So why doesn’t this robotic roller coaster give me a thrill, at least in concept?
Maybe I’m too tied to actual idea of roller coaster cars moving. Maybe the anticipation of where you’re going to go next, seeing the track ahead, knowing your stuck with it (and being able to brace for it) has some old-fashioned charm for me.
True — it’s a lot less land-intensive. But, then, I’m not sure that the physical presence of a roller coaster isn’t part of the fun. This just seems too much like a Star Tours-style “roller coaster in a box” sort of thing.
It also seems like it would be really easy to get violently ill on it. Though I suppose some folks would consider that charming.
(That it runs on Windows is … perhaps more of a thrill ride than I need.)
(via RISKS)
Our new camera, the Canon PowerShot S230, came in today. It’s about a year old, technology-wise (and, as mentioned earlier, is leaving the shelves even as we speak), but…
Our new camera, the Canon PowerShot S230, came in today. It’s about a year old, technology-wise (and, as mentioned earlier, is leaving the shelves even as we speak), but it uses our current investment in CF cards (and battery packs), and we liked our S110 plenty. The interface on it seems even better than the S110, so that’s all to the good, too.
Plus it comes with this picture of a really hot chick on the display, and … um, never mind.
Of course, it just missed the holiday weekend, dagnabbit.
